Quintet Q&A: Going for the Green…Light…

A while back I was tuned into a (at the time) multiplayer bridge simulator game thingy called Quintet in which players can crew different parts of a spaceship’s bridge in different scenarios. Since then the game has had a successful Kickstarter campaign and has now appeared on Steam Greenlight. I felt it’d be fun to catch up with the game’s developer, Carmine Guida, and learn more about the game, Greenlight and so on. Check out my text Q&A with Carmine below, and go vote for the game on Greenlight.

PS. Apparently this can be played over the interwebs. Would some SGJ folks be interested in trying out a game? ;)

Brian Rubin: First off, for those who don’t know, what is Quintet?

Carmine Guida: Quintet is a sci-fi, multiplayer, cross-platform, “crew” game where players work harmoniously to control the same ship. There are 5 roles: Captain, Helm, Tactical, Engineering and Science.

BR: How long have you been working on Quintet, and where did the idea come from?

CG: I’ve been a Trek fan since I was a kid (my favorite right now is DS9). I’ve been going to Star Trek conventions for about 2 decades now. I’ve always wanted to make a game like Quintet for a bunch of years now. A couple of years ago, I started to learn Unity3D and started working on Quintet.

BR: The game just popped up on Steam Greenlight, congrats! (Everyone go vote for it!) Now how has that been going, and is it something you need to constantly update and monitor like a Kickstarter campaign or can you be a bit more laid back?

CG: Thanks! In the first bunch of days, there was tons of voting on Quintet for Steam Greenlight (it ends up in a “what’s new” area, etc.) but now I definitely need to drive more people to the page to vote for it. Once approved, I can add some Steam specific features to Quintet (using your Steam login and achievements).

BR: It looks like this game is running in Unity, is that how you’re able to support so many platforms?

CG: Yes. Unity makes it much easier to support multiple platforms. You have some quirks here and there, but it definitely saves you a ton of work.

BR: How did you come up with a clear set of tasks for each station so there would be minimal confusion?

CG: I want the game to be deep, but not complicated. I wanted to make sure that friend of yours who likes sci-fi but maybe doesn’t play games that much could hop right in. I also want people to communicate with each other. I could easily show all the information on everyone’s screen but it wouldn’t be in the spirit of the game.

BR: What was the process you used to come up with not only a unifying look to the UI, but also the specific UI for each station?

CG: Having consistency across the stations really helps players learn the game faster. I always have target/lists on the left, and “stuff you can do” on the right. This way if you switch from Tactical to Science you’re ready to go. Also, I wanted Quintet to look really good on tablets, so I made sure the buttons where actually the size of people’s fingers. I was also inspired of course by LCARS flat/2D buttons.

BR: Could you please tell us about the different races in the game and how their ships vary?

CG: There are 5 playable races (plus another race) in Quintet. Different races will behave differently to each other, such as attacking on site, or ignoring, or “creeping” (scanning, getting within range).

Humans (white) – Are the “average/neutral” race (and a good place to start). I wanted to keep their abilities close to standard Trek stuff.

Zurna (yellow) – Fast maneuverable ships. Not much on firepower. But have great abilities like Cloak and Push Force.

Davul (red) – The big guns. Not fast or maneuverable. They enjoy ramming their prey!

Santoor (green) – The best engineers. Can spawn drones that fight alongside them.

Udu (blue) – The ancient scientists. Their ships can phase shift and has powerful tractor beams.

BR: Please also tell us about the different types of ships the player and players can take control of in the game?

CG: There are 25 playable ships in Quintet. I wanted to offer different ships for different kinds of playing styles. You can play in a small maneuverable fighter entirely by yourself. Or you can have a team of 2, 3, 4 or 5. Different races have bonuses to abilities. Some ships/races have abilities others do not. All the different size ships with different amounts of players can all play with or against each other in Quintet.

BR: What kind of scenarios can the player or players encounter in the game?

CG: Funny you should ask… I’ve just started building a system so players can create their own scenarios! Quintet has an “Open Space” mode where ships can warp from location to location and play several missions. You can battle an armada. Take on 25 small ships. Take on a bunch of battleships. Do a transport escort mission. Stop incoming missiles from destroying your outpost.

Additionally, Quintet has fun PVP modes such as Capture the Flag, Battle Royal and more.

BR: Which of the positions is your favorite to actually play?

CG: I love playing Helm. Lately I’ve been hoping on new player’s ships as engineer.

BR: Which of the positions do people seem to want the most?

CG: Everyone loves being Tactical and blowing stuff up! :)

BR: Finally, might you ever create a single player version of Quintet? ;)

CG: Quintet has had single player available for about a year now! If you want to play entirely offline, you can go to Network Settings and choose “Offline” mode.

You can also download the LAN server and play on your local network also!

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Hi, I’m known as Spazticus, and I’m one of the guys who works on Quintet with Carmine. One thing not mentioned in this interview is that on Monday evenings, we have what we like to call Epic Battle Nights. We get a bunch of us on our Teamspeak server, and we coordinate our battles (both co-op and PvP) that way. We also tend to show sneak peeks of our upcoming features.

Our next Battle Night starts in just over an hour and a half, at the time of this post: April 21st, at 7 PM EST. The relevant details, for anyone who might be interested, are in the latest announcement I posted to the Greenlight page this morning. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, or leave us a comment on the Greenlight page.

We often get compared to Artemis at first glance, but the approach to each game’s design is different. Quintet was built from the very beginning to be single player-friendly, and you can always fly around in a Solo ship, if none of your friends are available. Or you can drop in/drop out of someone’s ship at any time. Artemis wasn’t designed to have any single player functionality.

Online multiplatform multiplayer has been built into the game from the very beginning, though the LAN option is fun when you have everyone on your ship in the same room. (Of course, we’ve also had such groups join us in online battles!) Quintet also has full 3D flight, and is generally faster paced than Artemis.

We don’t consider any of these differences to be pros or cons, per se; rather, we find that a lot of our players enjoy both games!

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